You nay have seen that Obama ads are not being run next week in 7 Red states - incl. FL, VA, GA. MT and a few others.

Michael Barone whose background is in polling , not commentating was just on Fox reiterating this nonsense. The more this guy talks and writes the more I wonder how stupid he is on real politics - vs. polls.

The commentators all are pushing this as weakness and a sign that the campaign is going to abandon these states. Just another example of the so called "experts" who know jack about marketing and advertising and politics.

Why would Obama abandon these states? FL and VA are tied, MT is leaning and he is visiting there this week....AK is ripe with the scandals and we have dozens of offices in GA and hundreds of staff etc...

He is not. As a marketing person let me share what should be obvious here:

The convention is a week of free advertising. Why spend money when you will get coverage in every national and local outlet online, TV, blogosphere and in print?

We've just named the ticket and the next ad campaign will feature our team. Getting those ready with the right message echoing the Convention themes is what will go on. The theme in and after Denver is going to be fresh an new.

Also a week off of the ads will help keep from message fatigue of frequently shown ads. There are 9 weeks to go and plenty more ads to run.

Finally and most importantly being off the air for a week will allow some real looks at public and internal polling in these states to see exactly where the campaign stands going forward so they can assess what to do.

The real status of some of these Red states won't be obvious until after the first debate in late September. After that it will be obvious if some of these states are in play or resources need to be redeployed financially and in terms of staff.

Remember, the power of the 50 state campaign is that even if a state is not in play later in the cycle folks in any state can still help by phone banking and having the mobilized via the web and the local staff is still a very powerful weapon.

Also staff can be reassigned in a heartbeat and volunteers can be organized and flown, bussed or car pooled into adjoining states like I did in NC for the primaries.

The lack of understanding of these idiots like Barone will show up on election night when the results show the savvy of the Obama team and campaign.